MJ's View. The Best Movies of 2025: The Great, The Good and the Overrated.

Some of the 2025 movies honored by the American Film Institute (AFI): Top Left, Frankenstein; Top Right, Hamnet; Bottom Left, Marty Supreme; Bottome Right.

Note: MJ's reviews of all the movies mentioned here can be found at MJtheMovies homepage.

It's that time of year that, for some of us, is as exciting as the holidays themselves: reviewing the year in film, identifying the best movies of 2025, and looking ahead to the awards season, which has already begun via many regional critics' awards, and will continue through January and February, culminating March 15, 2026 at the Oscars.

2025 has been a hodgepodge in terms of movies: unique and powerful, genre-crossing movies like Ryan Coogler's Sinners; quiet, evocative meditations on baseball, like Carson Lund's first feature, Eephus and Guillermo del Toro's lifelong passion project, Frankenstein, beautifully realized as an allegory on forgiveness and redemption, and a hearbreaking glimpse at the loneliness of immortality.

There have been disappointments and near-misses as well: the much anticipated Bruce Springsteen biopic, Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere, underwhelmed critics and fizzled at the box office, despite strong performances from Jeremy Allen White as "The Boss," and Jeremy Strong as Springsteen's long-time manager and friend, Jon Landau. Wicked: For Good, the second act of the popular Brodway musical arrived on a wave of a huge marketing campaign yet, like the musical's finale, it failed to impress most critics and has shown a steady decline at the box office after its opening weekend. Other disappointments include Hamnet, the critically proclaimed "best picture" (months before its release), which has yielded modest box office returns (just over $10M so far) and may now not have the endurance to score big at the Oscars.

As some of you know, I've always found the late film critic Gene Siskel's definition of "good" and "great" films to be useful when putting together an end-of-year "best" list. According to Siskel, a "good" movie has at least three great (re: memorable) scenes; a "great" movie also has at least three memorable scenes...and no bad ones. If you think about it for a moment, Siskel's definition makes a lot of sense. There are roughly 500 films released every year. How many of them actually make it to the theater for an extended run? Of those, how many really stand out in terms of box office sales? How many go straight to streaming? And how many of those you've seen via one venure or another, do you actually remember as being really good?

When I was teaching film history, I regularly asked students why they liked a movie, not if they enjoyed it. That question usually encouraged them to think about about what really made a movie worth seeing and, even more, seeing again. I've typically held the notion that a good movie is one worth seeing a second time, and if you find the second viewing as good or better than the first, you've got something that might even be great.

Using that measuring stick, I usually find it easy to pick a half-dozen "best" films, but expanding the list to ten or twenty starts to muddle the quality a bit. So rather than try to find a certain number of "best" films, I've generally found it more appropriate to identify my list of really exceptional movies. And because this list is small, I've included a few extra recommendations of movies that are worth seeing, plus two that I found highly overrated compared to other critics' lists.

Got your popcorn ready? Here we go....

MJ's Best of 2025 ("The Great")

5) Eephus - Look for Carson Lund's first feature to gain recognition at this year's Film Independent Spirit Awards, which are given for movies with budgets under $28 million. Lund has already been nominated for the Gena Rowlands Award (formerly, the John Cassavetes Award - Cassavetes, a pioneer of independent movies was memorialized by Film Independent with the award in 1999; he and Rowlands were husband and wife; the award was renamed in Rowlands honor after her death last year), which is given for a movie made for less than $1 million.

Lund's evocative story, named after an unusual and rarely used pitch called an "eephus," focuses on an autumn baseball game, the last one scheduled for an amateur New England team before their beloved stadium is demolished. But Eephus is about so much more than a nine-inning contest that lingers well into the night: it is a haunting eulogy for baseball and a treatise on the passing of time. It may well be the best film about baseball to date, not an underdog sports story or an homage to an athletic hero, but a lyrical, almost poetic paean to the beauty of sportsmanship and the wonder of how, in the words of Tom Waits: "time went so quickly, I went licky-splitly / out to my Ol' 55."

As I wrote in my review, Eephus held deep personal meaning for me, as it brought back so many memories of my dad: how he took me to Cleveland Indians game when I was a kid, how he taught me to keep score, and how - to this day - I can't watch a game without thinking of him and all the life lessons that were wrapped up with a hot dog and a Coke, a newly sharpened pencil and a thick, cardboard-like piece of paper. This past September, on the last day of the regular baseball season, when Guardians' infielder Brayan Rocchio hit a three-run homer in the bottom of the tenth inning to give Cleveland the American League Central Division title, I could just imagine the smile on my dad's face. Through my own excitement, I could feel him in my heart. The power of movies.

Eephus is currently available on Amazone Prime Video and Apple TV+.

4) Train Dreams - Clint Bentley's stunning interpretation of Denis Johnson's award-winning novella of the same name tells the ordinary tale of Robert Granier (Joel Edgerton), a railroad worker who lived roughly eighty years in and around the Idaho Panhandle. Granier's life is a solitary one, until he meets Gladys Olding (Felicity Jones) and they begin to build a life together, though that life is only sporadically punctuated by moments of bliss. Bentley and cinematographer Adolpho Veloso frame everything Robert sees - and all his fleeting memories - as a non-linear logue of his existence.

Veloso has already received early recogition for his brilliant camera work. Look for him to be a strong contender Oscar night. I'm also hoping that Edgerton's performance earns him a Best Actor nomination. He captures Robert's isolation with minimal dialogue and exquisitely restrained emotion. Ultimately, though, it is Bentley's vision and direction that elevates Robert's mundane existence into an extraordinary journey of life.

Train Dreams is currently streaming on Netflix.

3) Marty Supreme - Except for a few visuals during the opening credits and an awkward last shot of star Timothée Chalamet in the title role, Marty Supreme is about as close to perfect a movie you'll see. But I'm nitpicking here. Director and co-writer (w/Ronald Bronstein) Josh Safdie seamlessly blends cinematography with character development, integrates a pulsating score with the frenzied narrative, and never loses focus of aspiring table tennis champion Marty Mauser's quest for greatness. Loosely based on real-life table tennis champion Marty Reisman, Marty Supreme has more drive than a Formula One race and more intensity than a late night emergency room shift.

The movie is also a kind of counterpoint to Chalamet's own career trajectory, and his relentless marketing campaign on the film's behalf took him everywhere, from late night talk shows to the tops of the Empire State Building and Las Vegas's Sphere. Not too bad for someone afraid of heights. Buoyed by an impressive supporting cast, Chalamet owns every frame of this movie. He's practically in every scene, and when he's not on camera, Marty's energized ambition is ever-present. Paired with Safdie's hyper-kinetic direction, Marty Supreme is a fast-paced, intelligently written fable that lifts up the American Dream while simultaneously deconstructing its worth.

Expect multiple SAG (now "The Actor" Awards) and Oscar nominations when the awards short lists are announced in January. Guess I may need to check out some neon orange swag.

Marty Supreme is currently playing in theaters. Its run should extend at least through January.

TIE 1) Sinners - In directing only his fifth movie, thirty-nine year old Ryan Coogler may have crafted his finest film yet. And that's saying a lot, given that his previous four included Creed, two Black Panther installments, and my favorite, Fruitvale Station. It's also his fifth collaboration with the actor Michael B. Jordan, who effectively plays identical twins in this genre-defying period zombie musical. In what may be the best scene in film this year, Coogler stages a barn dance so ebullient that you can't take your eyes off the screen as it blends real and supernatural characters, trans-ancestral generations, and diverse musical styles. You'll need to watch it multiple times to soak in all that is going on. For me, the "Juke Joint Scene" is transformative cinema, a stunning example of how a director's vision can transport an audience to a different place, time, and environment.

Sinners is perhaps the best representation of Gene Siskel's "great film" definition. Scene after scene is stunning, mesmerizing and engaging. No segment, no character, no line of dialogue is wasted, and there is not one superfluous moment or weak performance. I've seen all or part of Sinners multiple times since its spring theatrical release, and I'd watch it again in a heartbeat. Coogler deserves every kudo, every award, every nomination he receives for this masterful film, and I'm hopeful that Sinners will be one of the leaders at this year's Oscar ceremony.

Sinners is currently available on multiple streaming platforms.

TIE 1) Frankenstein - As I look at my list of "best" films, I'm smiling that the two movies at the top are zombie/horror films, a genre that I rarely watch and generally don't like. Like Sinners, Frankenstein defies genre constrictions and follows Mary Shelley's novel more closely than any other version of the story. Unfortunately, director Guillermo del Toro's passion project likely suffers a bit from not being an original story like Coogler's Sinners. But then, del Toro already did that in 2017 with The Shape of Water, which won the Best Picture and Best Director Oscars for that year.

Mary Shelley's ghost has been looming over del Toro for decades now, and there are ongoing themes in his movies about monsters, misfits, and the inhumanity we often show toward one another. It is no surprise that "The Creature" here, magnificently played by Jacob Elordi, manifests the kind of pain common to all humans: rejection, loss, loneliness and isolation. Frankenstein is sweeping in scope, intimate in its story between creator (Victory Frankenstein, here passionately - Byronically? - played by Oscar Isaac) and creation, and remarkable visually. Set against Alexandre Desplat's lyrical score and Dan Laustsen's evocative cinematography, Frankenstein is a feast for the eye and nourishment for the soul.

In an interview with Deadline magazine at this year's Venice Film Festival where Frankenstein premiered, del Toro said of waiting so long to make this movie:

It was a religion for me. Since I was a kid — I was raised very Catholic —

I never quite understood the saints. And then when I saw Boris Karloff on the

screen, I understood what a saint or a messiah looked like. So I've been

following the creature since I was a kid, and I always waited for the movie to

be done in the right conditions, both creatively in terms of achieving the scope

that it needed for me to make it different, to make it at a scale that you could

reconstruct the whole world.

Reconstruct he did, and each time I've watched del Toro's Frankenstein, I've been swept away to another time and place, but also drawn to characters whose souls seemed inexplicably connected to mine. Del Toro poignantly - splendidly - ends the film with this quote from Lord Byron, "The heart will break and yet brokenly live on." Amen.

Frankenstein is currently available on Netflix.

If you've already seen these top five "great" films from 2025, here are a few more I'd call genuinely "good" movies. Each one is definitely worth a look.

MJ's Next Best ("The Good")

5) Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere - I really hoped this film would have been better. It rode in like thunder and then vanished without so much as a whisper. Maybe because Bruce Springsteen is my generation's Bob Dylan, I wanted any version of a biopic about "The Boss" to be as critically praised and emotionally moving as last year's A Complete Unknown. Granted, rock star biopics are becoming as common as Marvel Comics installments, though I would argue that few of them even come close to capturing the artist's they portray. Rami Malek's Oscar win for his prosthetically enhanced lip-syncing of Queen icon Freddie Mercury, still annoys me, and the upcoming Michael about the "King of Pop" is already giving me pause.

Like A Complete Unknown, which smartly focused on one narrow period in folk singer Bob Dylan's life, Deliver Me From Nowhere centers on the period in Springsteen's life after the success of 1980's The River and before the release of 1984's Born in the USA. Poised to take his rock stardom even higher after the triple successes of Born to Run, Darkness on the Edge of Town and The River, Springsteen enters a period of personal reflection and encroaching depression. With record producers eager for another pulsating rock album, Springsteen instead returns to his Jersey roots and composes what would become the hauntingly accoustic Nebraska album. As stark musically as the Badlands about which he writes (and the brutal Starkweather murders, in particular), Springsteen's self-imposed isolation threatened his own career path and, in some ways, his very existence.

Perhaps, that kind of internal struggle didn't present enough of a dramatic arc for Scott Cooper's film, based on Warren Zane's book of the same name. Sometimes the historical narrative of such a personal time doesn't translate as well to the big screen, though it's not for lack of trying. Jeremy Allen White's interpretation of a man in emotional pain is convincing, though it's not always clear he's channeling Springsteen. Ditto for Jeremy Strong's fine performance as Bruce's longtime friend and manager, Jon Landau. The two Jeremy's share fine screen time together, but somehow never quite pull off Springsteen's magnetism, his victory, or his pain.

That said, Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere is still worth seeing, especially - but not exclusively - if you are interested in rock and roll and its cultural impact. For me, as the product of a blue collar rust belt community outside of Cleveland, OH, there was a lot that resonated with me in this film. Though I did not have the kind of violent, contentious relationship with my dad that Bruce had with his, I did relate to his working class environment growing up. I only wish there was more of that in the movie, but that doesn't mean the final cut isn't good. Just don't go in expecting the kind of excitement you might find at a Springsteen concert. That kind of magic is left to Bruce himself. Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere is rated PG-13 (seriously, for a film about a rock star?) and available to rent on multiple streaming platforms.

4) Materialists - Last year's Past Lives was one of my favorite movies, and Celine Song's sophomore effort does not disappoint. Led by a cast that includes the very popular Pedro Pascal (he's been busy this year!), Dakota Johnson and Chris Evans. Song's examination of love from a pragmatic view - Johnson's character Lucy works for a matchmaking service called Adore - has just enough quirkiness to avoid the usual rom-com clichés, giving the story and the characters a freshness that keeps you interested. For whatever reason, MJ's review of Materialists has been my most popular blog post yet. Go figure...and keep telling your friends about my reviews. In any case, Song is quickly becoming the expert on all kinds of love, and I can't wait to see which part of the heart she explores next. Materialists is rated "R" and available on multiple streaming platforms.

3) Sorry, Baby - Writer/star Eva Victor's first directing effort is the kind of independent movie Robert Redford's Sundance Institute was made for. Like Train Dreams and Eephus, Sorry, Baby is a low budget movie with bigger themes, here the aftermath of sexual assault....sort of. Victor's funny, sometimes goofy, sometimes bitingly real script is deliberately, sometimes maddeningly ambiguous, just like her character, Agnes, a literature professor learning to cope with what she thinks happened to her. Victor's story left me thinking about Sorry, Baby for days afterward, though I can't say this movie is without major flaws, including a very unsatisfying resolution.

Maybe that was Victor's intent, but be forewarned that this movie is not conventional in the usual ways, including storyline and character development. Still, it is provocative even with some built-in narrative frustrations. It's getting strong recognition from the Film Independent Sprit Awards, so now the next test will be its viability with the Oscars. Stay tuned. Sorry, Baby is rated "R" and available on multiple streaming platforms.

2) Jay Kelly - I had really high expectations for this one after reading spectacular early buzz on Noah Baumbach's latest project: an exploration of celebrity and its impact on those closest to it. Baumbach has been a favorite of mine every since 1995's Kicking and Screaming and, despite a few years in the early 2000s when I feared his partnership with Greta Gerwig was pulling him away from some of the essential themes I'd become familiar with, I always look forward to his latest exploration of people and relationships. Too, Baumbach often cites Woody Allen as one of his heroes, and that always piques my interest.

So, with George Clooney in the title role and a supporting cast that included Adam Sandler, Laura Dern, and Gerwig, I was pretty much stoked for what promised to be an insightful dramedy. And it was, even though reviews and audience response seem to have been less enthusiastic than anticipated. The movie's very limited release before moving straight to streaming might have been a factor in its getting lost in this year's awards shuffle.

Baumbach's insider look at the price of fame is smart without being preachy, gentle without getting maudlin, and razor-sharp edgy when it needs to be. At the core is Clooney's savvy performance: an aging Hollywood heartthrob who realizes that life is passing by, and he's missed most of it by being Jay Kelly. Clooney blurs the line between Jay Kelly the person and Jay Kelly the celebrity to show that even he sometimes can't tell where the person ends and the celebrity begins. As Jay's attentive manager, Adam Sandler is a revelation and certainly deserving of an Oscar nomination (though I'm pulling for Jacob Elordi to gain momentum in that race for Frankenstsein), and Clooney's casting might have been the best decision in making Jay Kelly more than just a popcorn movie. Clooney's self-deprecating persona, including recent comments about his own future as a film actor, combine to give Jay Kelly depth and the movie a multi-layered look at what fame does to an individual and those around them.

Jay Kelly has named to AFI's list of top movies for 2025 and has received four Critics Choice Awards nominations and two Golden Globes, but the likelihood of an Oscar nomination other than Adam Sandler's supporting performance is quickly dwindling. Too bad. It's a fine film that deserves more attention, one that should be seen... and seen again.

Jay Kelly is currently streaming on Netflix.

1) Nouvelle Vague - Director Richard Linklater's ode to French New Wave cinema genius Jean-Luc Godard is an immersion into late 1950s France, a pastiche of the famous Cahiers du Cinema, and an intricate look at how movies are made. From navigating mercurial actors to juggling film schedules, Godard sets the standard for the future of movie-making as he works to create on-screen the kind of spontaneity that defines real life. Godard's vision will produce the now classic film Breathless, and Linklater recreates an era of filmmaking that would shape cinema for decades to come. If you're not a cinephile, you may need a scorecard to keep up with cast of actors and directors included in the movie (the New York Times published such a resource), but entering Linklater's world is worth it, even if you must rely on subtitles (the movie is in French).

If Nouvelle Vague isn't your thing, check out Linklater's other fine film this year, Blue Moon, another sonnet to an artistic genius, this time lyricist Lorenz Hart (Ethan Hawke). Taking place on one fateful night in what would turn out to be the final months of Hart's life, Blue Moon explores the demons that drive - and ultimately, destroy - the creative process. Ethan Hawke's metapmorphosis into the diminuative Hart is nothing short of sensational, and his performance is still being talked about for Oscar consideration.

Nouvelle Vague is currently streaming on Netflix.

Blue Moon is available on multiple streaming platforms.

So, if I were combining the "good" and the "great," and ranking from lowest to highest...

Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere

Materialists

Sorry, Baby

Jay Kelly

Nouvelle Vague

Eephus

Train Dreams

Marty Supreme

Sinners (Tie for First)

Frankenstein (Tie for First)

MJ's Exclusions ("The Overrated")

Back to Gene Siskel. Two movies that have made their way to almost every "Best of 2025" film list are not included here. Actually, they've been excluded for reasons you may not agree with, but for reasons rooted in how I assess film. Buckle up, Buttercup. Here we go!

Hamnet - As early as last summer, Hamnet was already being marketed as "the movie of the year" or "2025's Best Picture." That was before One Battle After Another charged into theaters in late September and seemed to steal a lot of "best picture" buzz away. More on Battle in a moment. I will admit I was intrigued by a movie version of Maggie O'Farrell's best-selling novel, a fictionalized depiction about the marriage of William Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway and, more specifically, the impact of their son Hamnet's death on The Bard's subsequent writing of Hamlet. I did not read O'Farrell's novel, so I have nothing to compare the film to, although a few reviews have noted that the novel is richer in its exploration of grief than the film.

Co-written by O'Farrell and director Chloe Zhao, Hamnet felt overblown with symbolism - must Anne/Agnes (Jesse Buckley) constantly frolic in the woods, rest among the trees in a fetal position and subsequently give birth among the flowers? Why is Shakespeare (Paul Mescal) depicted as a kind of clueless moron? Every move, every gesture feels exaggerated, though Buckley may deserve an award for her many variations on weeping.

I'm not a stickler for historical accuracy in movies, as sometimes the drama of a particular event supercedes the actual details of its occurrence, and I don't mind mixing periods as Coogler so expertly does in Sinners. But to suggest that Hamlet's soliloquy "To be or not to be" was the result of Shakespeare's frustration with his actors as he appears in denial about his son's recent death, felt clumsy and misplaced. Not a Shakespearean scholar nor a literary expert am I (I leave those to my husband), but the extended 20-minute sequence that builds to the movie's climax, is so filled with inconsistencies about Shakespeare's literary timelines and inaccuracies about the play's original performance that (for me), it ultimately detracted from Zhao's intended metaphor about the meaning of Hamlet as a conduit to grieving.

Zhao, beautifully subtle in her Oscar-winning Nomadland, seemed s intent on showing grief that she lost the real power of O'Farrell's novel: to lift up a lesser known historic figure (Anne/Agnes) in ways that shed light on the period and on the role of one woman as muse to one of literature's giants. Clearly, this was an opportunity squandered. Hamnet is still playing in theaters and not expected to stream until late January 2026.

One Battle After Another - After seeing the trailer for Paul Thomas Anderson's latest magnum opus, I was hopeful that the movie might be as fast-paced as its preview. It was not. On the scale of "three great scenes and no bad ones," One Battle After Another fails the test. Anderson tookalmost forty minutes to set up the movie's premise: retired revolutionary Bob (Leonardo DiCaprio) faces a crisis when his teenage daughter is kidnapped by - you guessed it - an old nemisis, one Col. Lockjaw (I can't make this stuff up) who is now part of a secret white supremicist group called "Christmas Adventurers Club." Bob used to belong to a counter secret group called French 75. Get it?

Normally, I would find this kind of humor funny, but somehow, Anderson is so ham-fisted in his presentation of this absurdist black comedy action adventure thriller (can he possibly squeeze in another genre?), that I got bored less than an hour in (the movie runs almost two and a half). Come to think of it, I've been bored with most of Anderson's films - have you ever sat through Magnolia?

Long explanation shortened here, I understood what Anderson was doing in terms of a political satire, a message about the future of democracy, etc., etc. But I've seen better, even shorter movies that have every bit as much, if not more, to say and to say more succinctly, more powerfully and more memorably than what Anderson has cobbled together here. Maybe the stoner culture just isn't my thing, but Bob's inability to remember a two-step password was played so often in previews that it just fell flat when I watched the film. I'm sure Anderson will be encouraged by One Battle After Another's critical reception. I just hope he doesn't make a sequel, and I'm trying to be optimistic that Sinners will take home the Oscar for Best Picture. I still haven't gotten over Anora's win last year. The Oscars can't go back-to-back with pretentious, overrated movies, can they?

MJ's Wrap

There you have it, MJ's 2025 movie wrap. I'll continue to check out Oscar contenders over the next few weeks, as some of the lesser known/critically acclaimed movies become available, so look for future blog posts with multiple mini-reviews and some updates as the awards season progresses. SAG nominations - now called "The Actors" will be announced January 7, with Oscar nominations following on January 22.

Lots to do until then. Meantime, check out some of this year's best... and I'll see you at the movies!